Multi Bidder Scam

ziffius

hewlett wrote:

hi dont know if anyone has come across this method of scam
a friend listed a brand new mobile phone and got the usual bids to start with and the bidding got frantic right up until the auction had only minutes to go then six of the highest bidders all retracted their bids ( highest bid was 170.00 ) leaving the next highest bidder left at £30.00. being a regular user of ebay he done some raking and found the same six bidders had done this three times already.
he has reported the mater to ebay and told the "winning" bidder that he will not be receiving the phone and has been reported to ebay.

as i said you may already know of this scam but thought i should let the info out for all
cheers:beer:

Hi,

It's called "Bid shielding - Using secondary User IDs or other eBay members to temporarily raise the level of bidding and/or price of an item to extremely high levels in order to protect the low bid level of a third bidder". http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/community/investigates.html

There used to be a information page on eBay's help pages, but it looks like it has been removed. There's some information here: http://members.cox.net/cruentidei/ebay/invalid.html

The only information on Ebay is here http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/buy/bid-retract.html which states: "If you suspect Bid Shielding (using two User IDs to place high bids which conceal a low bid from a third User ID, then retracting the high bids to win the auction at a low price) or Shill Bidding (using another account to bid on an item and artificially inflate its price or desirability) has taken place on an auction, please report it to us."

It's less common than it used to be, as you can now only retract a bid in the last 12 hours that was placed with the last 12 hours.

Last year I came across someone who was doing it, using several accounts. Their main account had 57 bid retractions, reported them and eBay said they had did nothing wrong. I felt really sorry for they sellers involved, i'm not sure if they knew what was going on.

Every time i've reported someone for shill bidding, they have been kicked off. Seems sad really, as bid shielding is much much worse.

hewlett

have just sent a text to the seller asking for the user name, never herd of shield bidding, just hope this post helps others is all.

ziffius

soolin wrote:

Like others have said this scam only works in a time frame of less than one hour, so the 'buyer' needs to be quick with his typing. Bids placed in the final 12 hours of an auction can only be withdrawn by the buyer within an hour of being placed..so the scammer needs to be sure he has his timing right. As there is such an margin of error here it is a scam rarely seen. It would also not work if the bids are pulled with less than about 12 seconds to go...as most snipers come in in the final seconds, so a genuine buyer would still win the auction.

Imagine therefore the scammer trying desperately to log in and out within seconds to pull bids, just as ebay has one of its periodic crashes.

No, you're wrong. If bid shielder placed a bid an hour from the end, there wouldn't any snipers as the price would be so high they wouldn't be intrested. Most people would see the high price and then walk right on by.

On a lot of auctions most of the bids come in the last few minutes, i've often seen something going cheap and got excitied, only in the last hour to see it shoot up to 3x - 8x what it was.

Switching between users can be much easier. There used to be a program in the NT resource kit that would have different user/ desktops assigned to the fuction keys. I'm sure there's one for XP.

Many people also have laptops and wifi, so no need to do all the logging in and logging out. It's often also a group of friends who work together to rip sellers off.

hewlett

ok got the info for the community
buyers user name is "phone.buyer"
and the last two items he purchased gary.555 and terrybhai both retracted bids claiming wrong amount entered.
hope this helps

pennylane99

gary.5555 has 36 bid retractions in last 6 months.....and terrybhai has 6 bid retractions since joining 10th Jan...

and they both retracted their high bids on the last 4 items phone.buyer won.

soolin

ziffius wrote:

No, you're wrong. If bid shielder placed a bid an hour from the end, there wouldn't any snipers as the price would be so high they wouldn't be intrested. Most people would see the high price and then walk right on by.

.

I was referring to using the automatic sniping software where all that matters is whether the bid 'might' win if it is placed in the final few seconds. many buyers set up a snipe with an outside company as soon as they see the item listed, those automatic systems often don't place a bid until literally a few seconds before the end. Therefore it wouldn't matter what was going on beforehand as the buyer probably stopped watching the auction as soon as he set up his snipe.

Snooze_Control

soolin wrote:

I was referring to using the automatic sniping software where all that matters is whether the bid 'might' win if it is placed in the final few seconds. many buyers set up a snipe with an outside company as soon as they see the item listed, those automatic systems often don't place a bid until literally a few seconds before the end. Therefore it wouldn't matter what was going on beforehand as the buyer probably stopped watching the auction as soon as he set up his snipe.

Yes, that's the theory but you try doing it. Unless the sniper is set very close to the auction end it (which is pointless as it defeats the object of the sniper) then the chances are that it won't work as they throw a wobbly and get confused when someone makes a bid retraction.

I'm certainly not condoning the shielder's actions as I wouldn't like it to be done on any of my own listings but it's actually quite a clever way of getting stuff for the price you want. Where it falls apart - as per usual - is when the user get greedy and want £200 phones for pennies. If the Ebayer ID that actually wants the phone entered a realistic amount for it (say £150) and then bid shielded it up to a much higher amount using fake IDs to deter other interested parties, then they could retract their bids with minutes to go and get the phone for the price they want without arousing too much suspicion from the seller.

Hope I'm not going to get a slapped wrist for saying that Soo - just thinking out loud .

SC

Moglex

Snooze_Control wrote:

Yes, that's the theory but you try doing it. Unless the sniper is set very close to the auction end it (which is pointless as it defeats the object of the sniper) then the chances are that it won't work as they throw a wobbly and get confused when someone makes a bid retraction.

I don't quite see what you're saying here, SC.

I use BidNip and the way it works is that the BidNip server looks at the price 10 seconds before the end of the auction and if the current price is less that your maximum (allowing for the current bid increment) it bids your maximum.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a bid retraction but I can't see how it would confuse the bidding software.

It can come unstuck if fleabay is being very slow, though.

pennylane99

Moglex wrote:

I don't quite see what you're saying here, SC.

I use BidNip and the way it works is that the BidNip server looks at the price 10 seconds before the end of the auction and if the current price is less that your maximum (allowing for the current bid increment) it bids your maximum.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a bid retraction but I can't see how it would confuse the bidding software.

It can come unstuck if fleabay is being very slow, though.

some snipe programmes only update and check price every hour...so if within the last hour that snipe programme has run a check on your bid item, and sees that the item has got bids on for the amount over your snipe limit....it will not put forward your snipe.

Then the high bid is retracted, but the snipe programme wont update in time to counter that as it thinks the bid is over your limit.

ziffius

pennylane99 wrote:

some snipe programmes only update and check price every hour...so if within the last hour that snipe programme has run a check on your bid item, and sees that the item has got bids on for the amount over your snipe limit....it will not put forward your snipe.

Then the high bid is retracted, but the snipe programme wont update in time to counter that as it thinks the bid is over your limit.

How many people use these?

Personally I wouldn't touch one with a barge pole. No way i'm entering my account details in to a 3rd party program or website.